Crystal Realm Battles - Share Your Feedback

Season 4 is well underway and we have recently seen the introduction of Guild & Alliance cooldowns, Siphoning Mage Changes, new Warhorses and the reintroduction of many choke points in the world map. We appreciate all of the feedback you have shared with us on this so far, and you can find the latest adjustments being tested here on our NDA Balance Playtest thread.

Naturally, many of you guys are wondering what's next on the agenda and what is the current status of features we mentioned in our last Live Dev Q&A on the latest Roadmap, therefore we want to use this opportunity to give you more details on the upcoming Crystal Realm GvG Feature and get your thoughts and feedback on it ahead of time.

Keep in mind that the details of this feature are subject to change up until the point that it goes live.

1. Participation

If your guild owns a Resource territory you will have the additional option to fight once per day against other groups who have also chosen to use this feature.

2. Ruleset

In these GvG battles:

full loot is active

item power is soft capped at 1000, and each item power point above this threshold only counts 50% e.g. item power 1600 will be reduced to 1300.

the scoring mechanics are the same as in regular GvGs

the battle vault of the territory the team starts from is used

3. Requirements

To start the match:

players have to join (queue) the match (it will be listed below the regular upcoming GvG battles). This is possible from anywhere in the world as it is for regular GvG signups.

players have to be in the cluster of the territory from which they joined the battle during the time window of the territory

4. Time Windows

Currently the system offers two time windows similar to those of siege camps:

Each of the Resource Territories will have a tower level of 1, 2 or 3. Tower levels will:

increase after a win in a Crystal Realm Battle

decrease after a loss in a Crystal Realm Battle

remain the same after a draw in a Crystal Realm Battle

increase if the system cannot find an opponent for you

The tower level will also influence the rewards for the Crystal Realm Battle (see below).

6. Season Points

To keep the rough balance of Season points, we will move some of the points from territory ownership over to participation in Crystal Realm Battles

Previous Daily Season Points for Territory Ownership:

Mercia

336

Cumbria

288

Anglia

240

Royal

96

New Daily Season Points for Territory Ownership:

Mercia

216

Cumbria

168

Anglia

120

Royal

96

Max Season Points per Crystal Realm Battle:

Tower level

1

2

3

Mercia

190

240

290

Cumbria

190

240

290

Anglia

190

240

290

Royal

190

240

290

The Season Points will be sent directly to a team’s guild, while the siphoned energy can be looted along with other rewards at the end of the match.

Since this is the most crucial part that will also influence the seasonal competition we want to give you a bit more insight on our thought process here:

we want to set a point amount per fight, that reflects the risk you accept by entering a full loot battle against potentially strong opponents

we are keeping the total season points available per season roughly the same. This is necessary to keep all siphoning energy prices and thresholds stable

since we also match teams around the world against each other we think that only your tower level should influence the amount of points

and since these fights are synchronized (in two time windows), we see a potential for guilds with more than few GvG teams to shine here

we are still discussing the final values here, especially the share of the GvG fights compared to the territory ownership

7. Rewards

Rewards will be given out at match end as follows:

the winner always receives 25% of the total possible reward

75% will be divided into 4 bonus loot lists and be given out based on the final tickets at match end

for example:

a 150:0 win will give 100% of the loot to the winner

a 1:0 win will give 62.5% (25+ 37.5) to the winner and 37.5% to the loser

a draw will give out only 75% total and divide it between both teams based on final tickets

A team that signs up but cannot be matched will receive 25% of the total winner loot and approximately 63% of the total season points

As an additional motivation, Crystal Realm Battle rewards include:

non-tradable Tomes of Insight

non-tradable Silver bags

a chance for black market drops

There will be a set total amount of these items (Team1’s tower level at match start influences Team1’s loot etc.) and this will be given out following the same breakdown described for season points above.

8. Matchmaking

The matchmaking system will attempt to match teams of the same tower level against each other and only match different tower level teams if there would otherwise be no fight at all

This system will also prevent Crystal Realm Battles between two Territory Teams from the same Alliance!

Since this is quite a bit of info here, it would be great if you can reference the heading when sharing your feedback on that particular area. For example, if your feedback is on Time Windows, please use that as a subheading within your post.

Additionally, we plan to introduce this feature with our next update, but we do not have a time-frame to share for that just yet.

we're flexible regarding the Crystal Realm time windows so having them between warcamp timers is def. an option.

And regarding the resource territories that have regular GvGs at that time: these Crystal Realm fights can still take place since the current owners crystal team has to be only in the cluster surrounding the territory to take part in the Crystal Battle as of right now. However the battle vault should be filled beforehand.

At what point are people supposed to make some money off of these territories? The income was already severely compromised with mage-raiding, now you slashed the income again. Are you intentionally trying to make it so nobody new bothers with contesting existing organizations in territory ownership?

Why would anyone invest the enormous amount of player-hours and player-effort into faming and growing a GVG team, when guilds can kill 12-14 mages with pugs and achieve the same income for significantly less effort?

I would seriously recommend taking this back to the drawing board and reconsidering how it works, because this will result in;

a) Less incentive to guilds to conquer territories
b) Less GVG teams developing and contesting established entities
c) Less guilds being able to fund GVG teams

Honestly you guys need to do some research on what it takes for guilds to create and maintain a GVG team, then ponder what kind of incentives you need to put in to promote guilds to grow their teams. Growing takes money, teams are not cheap.

Just delete GvG's and territories from the game. It's the path you are going right now by continuing to devalue territory ownership. Stop trying to do it in small steps and rip the bandaid off. Let people quit in the mass droves that these changes are going to cause.

And Terrible times, as always.

The post was edited 1 time, last by A.Frosted.Wolf (Oct 19th 2018, 4:06pm).

I would put the time windows as 16 utc and 01 utc, not the same time from warcamps.

16utc is terrible time for EU players, its time when most ppl are comming back to home from work/school.
The most active EU time is 19-21UTC imo, and gates should be open is this time, 18utc is a bit too early.

Crystal real battles are such a GREAT idea, keep doing great stuff like that, we need content for much more ppl, not like now when 5man can control half of black zones, living in huge alliance and trying to kill ideas with new content which is preventing doing 10gvgs on 10 alts.

-having the crystal gvgs the same time as wartents is just gonna be problematic

-i also see this thing about about getting 100% of the loot to the winner, can we make it 149 when was the last time there was a legit 150 to 0 fight that didnt include people not showing or naked people trying to get cap points

- the crystal gvgs are taking place on a new map correct? or would queueing in different biomes make the map different where u play

Really getting sick and tired of this constant ip cap crap. Black zones are supposed to not be capped yet you keep doing it. The cap be progressive per zone (Royal 1000, Anglia 1100, Cumbria 1200, Mercia 1300). Stop and Ill repeat stop making it so that people who fame are being de-incentivized from faming and may as well have 30 characters with 6.1 unlocked to compete.

I really like the Crystal GvG idea and also how matchmaking works, but I do have a huge concern regarding the reqard system how it stands in the posting above.

If a team queued for a crystal GvG and can't be matched because there aren't enough teams queued from outside their own alliance, then they still get something out of this. I mean, if I don't fight, why should I be rewarded? This is free income and needs to be removed otherwise smaller guilds and beginner never have the chance to catch up.

At what point are people supposed to make some money off of these territories? The income was already severely compromised with mage-raiding, now you slashed the income again. Are you intentionally trying to make it so nobody new bothers with contesting existing organizations in territory ownership?

Will you not get more season points if you can win these crystal GvGs? This is what you are asking for, no? The ability for territories to get you more rewards. It's just not auto-given by having them.

Seems like a great way to introduce a "tier 2" GvG scene that actually impacts their guilds success. Perfect for helping newer teams learn, and just letting more people participate.

I like the idea and the rewards seems good. But there are 2 big negative points in this

- Timers : this will take place at the same time as warcamps, draining a lot of people from the zvz scene into the crystal realms. I do understand that those might be the hours of maximum people online but that's because of that warcamp ZvZ fight. Draining people from such a important timer ingame is a big mistake since it will just make large scale fights smaller. Move it to 19:00 utc and 4:00 utc or do 4 timers around the clock with the peak of players at NON WARCAMP time.

-Devalating territories AGAIN: at this point of the game you want to take T8 resources out of territories. Mages are so easily killed that i've seen 3 man teams take a make in less than 2 minutes. even with the changes in the NDA balance i think a group of 4/5 can take a mage in maximum 5 minutes with proper organization. And now the territory will produce less points and less energy. Whats the poing of having the territories then?

So with this change i think you will bleed players some really dedicated players that sink hours and hours into the game and at the same time you will make trying to take a territory not worthwhile.
Let's say i have a recently started guild with 2 teams of 5 going on. training their asses to fame farm their gear up and do scimms all day long. do you think it's gonna be worth their time spent to take a territory if they are slowly less and less profitable? why not just do scrimms crystal gvgs and HCE until you knock yourself out

At what point are people supposed to make some money off of these territories? The income was already severely compromised with mage-raiding, now you slashed the income again. Are you intentionally trying to make it so nobody new bothers with contesting existing organizations in territory ownership?

Will you not get more season points if you can win these crystal GvGs? This is what you are asking for, no? The ability for territories to get you more rewards. It's just not auto-given by having them.
Seems like a great way to introduce a "tier 2" GvG scene that actually impacts their guilds success. Perfect for helping newer teams learn, and just letting more people participate.

season points dont give sets

Timezone for EU 100% needs to be between 19-21 UTC

Looks like territories will become a slot to crystal gvgs and dont provide any value other than it

The post was edited 1 time, last by tabooshka (Oct 19th 2018, 4:42pm).

At what point are people supposed to make some money off of these territories? The income was already severely compromised with mage-raiding, now you slashed the income again. Are you intentionally trying to make it so nobody new bothers with contesting existing organizations in territory ownership?

Will you not get more season points if you can win these crystal GvGs? This is what you are asking for, no? The ability for territories to get you more rewards. It's just not auto-given by having them.
Seems like a great way to introduce a "tier 2" GvG scene that actually impacts their guilds success. Perfect for helping newer teams learn, and just letting more people participate.

So this tier 2 GvG scene will be worth more than the original since actually owning the territories are nerfed. Guilds already have to be defending the territories in order to hold onto them on the REAL map without compensation due to nerfs. Then having to try to motivate and interest new GvG teams to fight in the 2nd round to actually be rewarded. GvG'ing is already intensive and expensive, and by nerfing territories you are hurting the GvG scene, as well as the guilds that have put in the work and effort to get where they are now. There should be a flat reward of season points/energy for owning the territory and then the Siphoning Mages on top of that to stimulate open world. There is nothing wrong with adding a second layer of possible rewards, but SBI needs to stop taking away and nerfing just to implement new things.

All these changes to season points should have been fleshed out before the season started. You call it GvG season 4, yet continue to nerf territories and hurt those who put effort into GvG'ing. Maybe it's time to consider running a GvG season alongside a regular Open World ZvZ season. The prime GvG fight in the game (Caerleon)(City Fights) give nothing compared to other activities. This issue has been ignored because season points used to be worthless.Now with the introduction of rewards for seasons that has changed. SBI needs to take the new change and added value of season points into account.

The post was edited 1 time, last by A.Frosted.Wolf (Oct 19th 2018, 4:56pm).

Here is something that is sure to bring some excitement, at least in the early days. However...

1 - As has already been mentioned Timezone for US EU needs to be between 19-21 UTC

Demote the importance of the territories is a bad move. I understand that this is an economic choice, but with the current situation of the mages becomes penalizing.
2 - Why is the same wasn't done for the mages, because now the death of the mages removes 100% from the guilds and not only 50% and the rest always to the guild that owns the territories. It would be fairer for anyone who has the job of defending/conquering territories.

3 - Should be created the possibility to enter the list from any Warcamp, so guilds without territories would not be outside this game option, but only receive level 1 reward.

Please Dev's review the Season points for not to be removed from the territories in this situation, or so that the points lost with the mages are not 100%.

The post was edited 1 time, last by LordSilva (Oct 19th 2018, 7:19pm).

By US I assume you mean EU, just to clarify. 19-21 would be a terrible USA timeframe.

NA timer needs to be 02-03 after dst is over. Maybe even 04:00 to allow for maximum availability. 01:00 is too early imo. Its when most people are just finishing dinner and evening routines after work. Better to cater the time frames to people with jobs and families since students and kids can play any time anyway. This provides the most potential for maxium participation.

The cost of GVGing is very high but a lot of that has tk do with availability of resources. If 8.1/8.2 resources were cheaper, GVGs would invariably get cheaper as well over time. The cost of entry will still be high (as it should be for top end game content) but more accessibility to wealth will increase overall participation to some degree.